1. Field of Invention
The present disclosure relates to electronic devices, and more particularly, to medical diagnostic devices for auscultation.
2. Description of Related Art
Stethoscopes have long been used for auscultation, which is the process of listening to the internal sounds of the human body, such as those of the heart and lungs. The application of new technologies to the design of stethoscopes can provide healthcare personnel with instruments that support improved patient outcomes. The capture of body sounds and subsequent translation to electrical signals enables amplification, filtering, and other signal processing to improve the diagnostic quality of audio signals presented to a clinician. Reduction of the electrical signals representing body sounds to digital form further facilitates the application of a large complement of widespread computer-related technology for data storage, transmission, and processing. Examples of this application include incorporation of recorded body sounds into patient electronic medical records and replay of body sounds for analysis by one or more clinicians. Moreover, when digital audio files are transmitted over electronic data networks additional benefits may be realized. These include diagnosis at a distance, collaboration by physically distant healthcare personnel, and the use of remotely hosted computational healthcare services including automated expert-system diagnosis and population-level analysis of data from many patients.